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Mani Ratnam is a master filmmaker, in fact one of the best in India. He has that unusual story-telling ability, a first-rate command over the medium and to top it all the zest to go for remarkable and gallant subjects. With some of the premium international and national awards to his credit Mani Ratnam is one of the most talented and enterprising directors in the business today.

His previous two Hindi movies DIL SE and YUVA didn’t go well at the box-office. The business was bleak and the acclaim too was more of a mixed bag. This time the soft-spoken director offers his latest Hindi venture GURU starring Abhishek Bachchan in the title role. The movie is rumored to have been based upon the life of one of India’s leading business tycoons. GURU is more of a period film set in the 1950’s onwards.

The promos of the film are fat catching up and so is the music. This time again is the trio of Mani Ratnam, Gulzar and A R Rahman who had previously teamed up for DIL SE. The music of DIL SE is everybody’s knowledge and it was a rage in those days. The song ‘Chaiiya Chaiiya’ remains simply unforgettable and so is the picturisation. The music for GURU also looks promising and might catch up as well.

GURU stars Abhishek Bachchan in the title role. This would be his second film with the ace director. It was Mani Ratnam’s YUVA that had in true sense brought Abhishek Bachchan in the reckoning. This would also be his second title role after his debut REFUGEE that was a box-office disaster. Aishwarya Rai, R.Madhavan, Mithun Chakraborty, Vidya Balan and Mallika Sherawat round off the rest of the cast.

GURU is the story of a simple but ambitious villager Gurukant Desai. He dreams big and to fulfill his dreams he arrives in the then Bombay (1958). He is married to Sujata (Aishwarya Rai) and has a brother-in-law. He also has something else; two shirts and Rs.15,000 to start his business. But soon he realizes that the business world is ruled by a handful of rich and influential people and for him to make his foray in to this globe he has to “force” his way into it.

So it’s both black and white sides to him now. His fair side wins him admirers, at the same time as his grey side earns him a few detractors. Nanaji (Mithun) who runs a newspaper Swatantra and Shyam Saxena are two of them who stand up to fight Guru’s unjust ways.

So does Guru emerge as the winner, forms the rest of the story.

The cinematography for the film has been done by the eminent photographer Rajiv Menon. The film is produced by Mani Ratnam and G.Srinivasan. The dialogues been penned by Vijay Krishna Acharya and the audiography is by H.Sridhar.

Mani’s previous two Hindi ventures could not scoop up success at the box-office. Will GURU write a different story for him this time around?